LGBTQ+ Pride Week dates announced

The Office of the Sôgmô has just announced this year’s dates for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer+ Pride Week: 22 to 28 June 2015. The traditional annual Sandum holiday will conclude on the anniversary of the Stonewall Revolution, an event that took place on 28 June 1969. The Office of the Sôgmô has also released three posters produced by Erganê for the Sandum holiday in the three official languages of Sandus: English, French, and Latin.

LGBTQ+ Pride Week is a traditional holiday in Sandus and has been observed since 2011 when Sandus instituted it as a cultural holiday and marked 28 June as a day of recognition for the Stonewall Revolution. The day is used to commemorate the LGBTQ+ community of Sandum, friends and allies of Sandus, and residents of Sandus’s Kremlum Sandus Province. During the month of June, the Sôgmô visits multiple LGBTQ+ Pride events, from the Capitol Pride Parade in Washington D.C. to hosting events on behalf of Sandus to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride.

This year’s celebrations are especially poignant, as Sandus’s partner in its condominium — the United States — will observe a Supreme Court decision ruling on marriage equality throughout the American union, which matters to Sandum citizens due to the overlapping sovereignty of the United States. The holiday has long been a political as well as sociocultural statement. It has marked such decisions as the 2013 DOMA and Prop 8 American Supreme Court decisions and the decision by Sandus to sign a ground-breaking agreement of cooperation with Zealandia on LGBTQ+ civil and human rights. Sandus has often used the holiday as a political statement against micronations who oppose LGBTQ+ rights and dignity, while celebrating the identities, cultures, and dignity of LGBTQ+ peoples.

The LGBTQ+ Pride Week posters mark the first time Erganê Artisanal Cooperative has exercised its new function as the creator of Sandum propaganda posters, since the ratification of sections of the 2015 Economic Development Plan.